Can Donald Trump Win? These Battleground Regions Will Decide

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Domino Park last week in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. Florida may present the most punishing test of Donald J. Trump’s election strategy, as Hispanics there, including conservative-leaning Cuban-Americans, turn away from his candidacy.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times

With Donald J. Trump pulling even or ahead of Hillary Clinton in a series of recent national polls, the once unthinkable has become at least plausible. But if he is to be elected the 45th president, he must compete on a political map that, for now, looks forbidding.

In the Republican primaries, he proved a master of nationalizing the political debate, appealing to voters across regional lines with jeremiads about immigration and crime that captivated an almost uniformly white primary electorate. At the outset of the general election, Mr. Trump has dominated the day-to-day political combat on national television and social media.

In the general election, however, his fate will be determined not by his Twitter followers or a relatively homogeneous Republican electorate, but by a set of interlocking and increasingly diverse regions, home to some 90 million Americans, that hold many of the 270 electoral votes he needs to win.

Republicans enter the general election at a hefty disadvantage: Since the 1992 campaign, 18 states have voted consistently for Democrats in presidential elections, giving their party a firm foundation of 242 electoral votes to build upon.

And in the four regions likely to decide the presidency — Florida, the upper Southeast, the Rust Belt and the interior West — Mr. Trump faces daunting obstacles, according to interviews last week with elected officials, political strategists and voters.

Of course, months remain before voting begins, and this political year has defied many predictions. But if Mrs. Clinton clinches the Democratic nomination as expected, she may find an electoral bulwark in these coveted swing-state voters.

Minority Clout in South Florida

MIAMI — Had Republicans nominated Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush for president, Tomás Regalado would have hurled himself into the task of electing their candidate.

“I would have been all in,” Mr. Regalado, the Republican mayor of Miami, said in his office overlooking Biscayne Bay.

Instead, Mr. Regalado, a former broadcast journalist, intends to sit out the presidential race. He considers Mrs. Clinton untrustworthy, but views Mr. Trump as a poisonous candidate who has aggravated racial divisions. In Miami, Mr. Regalado said, Mr. Trump is seen as “a bully, as a person who despises people that don’t look like him.”

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Mayor Tomás Regalado of Miami, a Republican, said he could not support Mr. Trump’s candidacy.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times

Mr. Regalado, 69, said he had been inundated with angry email, some of it mentioning Mr. Trump by name. “Sometimes they say, ‘Yeah, Trump is right, you guys have to all go back to your country,’” said Mr. Regalado, who was born in Havana and emigrated as a teenager. “This is my country. I can’t go back to Cuba.”

But the southern tip of the nation’s most populous swing state has been a blazing exception to the trend — most of all in Miami-Dade County, a densely populated bastion of diversity that cast about a tenth of the statewide vote in 2012.

If Mr. Trump has effectively staked his campaign nationwide on strong support from whites, Florida may present the most punishing test of his strategy, as Hispanics here, including conservative-leaning Cuban-Americans who twice helped George W. Bush carry the state, turn away from his candidacy en masse.

Mr. Trump has trampled local sensibilities in myriad ways, from his belittling treatment of Mr. Rubio and Mr. Bush to his personal coarseness, slashing comments on immigration and endorsement of open relations with the Castro government.

In addition to Mr. Regalado, two Republican members of Congress from Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Carlos Curbelo, have said they will not back Mr. Trump, as has Carlos A. Gimenez, the Republican mayor of Miami-Dade County. All four are Cuban-American.

Early polls show voters in the area resoundingly rejecting Mr. Trump: A Quinnipiac University poll this month found Mr. Trump about even with Mrs. Clinton statewide, but losing a band of southeastern counties, including Miami-Dade and Broward, by 38 percentage points.

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Calle Ocho, or Eighth Street, in Little Havana. In his efforts to win Florida in 2012, Mitt Romney found it difficult to overcome a catastrophic defeat in Miami.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times

Roxana M. Leon, 63, an independent voter raised in Chile, said she wanted major change in Washington, but found Mr. Trump too objectionable to support. “He’s not the right person,” said Ms. Leon, who works as a secretary. “I am sick and tired of the old establishment, but I will vote for Clinton.”

Some voters who were once intrigued by Mr. Trump now regard him with distaste. Carlos Guerrero, 55, said he had been willing to “look the other way” on many of Mr. Trump’s speeches — including “the way he speaks of Latin people” — because he liked Mr. Trump’s overall message.

But Mr. Guerrero, a Republican who described himself as a religious Catholic, said he recoiled when Mr. Trump began attacking Heidi Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz’s wife. “He is not qualified to run this country,” Mr. Guerrero, who is an actor, said of Mr. Trump. “This country was made by people who believed in God.”

Should Mr. Trump get trounced in South Florida, he might be hard-pressed to make up the difference elsewhere.

Trump supporters believe he can improve upon Mitt Romney’s performance in North Florida, in the conservative panhandle region and in the Jacksonville area. But Mr. Romney found it difficult in 2012 to overcome a catastrophic defeat in Miami. He cut into President Obama’s support across most of Florida, but the president held steady in Tampa and Orlando, two other diverse cities, and expanded his margin of victory in Miami-Dade by about 69,000 votes over his 2008 lead.

Mr. Trump has his supporters here. Norma Samour, the owner of a shopping center, said she was a habitual Republican voter and would likely back Mr. Trump despite some mixed feelings. “He will make the United States more like it was 15 years ago,” said Ms. Samour, 56, who was raised in El Salvador and is of Palestinian descent. “People all over the world used to respect the United States.”

Yet the falloff Mr. Trump faces has, at a minimum, severely hindered Republican efforts to win statewide. Mr. Gimenez, the Miami-Dade mayor, said nominating Mr. Bush or Mr. Rubio would have allowed Republicans to challenge the Democrats’ dominance in South Florida.

“I don’t think the margin of defeat in Miami itself would have been as large,” Mr. Gimenez said. “Because of that, they may have been able to carry the state.” ALEXANDER BURNS

On the Fence in the Upper South

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina has a split political personality. Consider Debbie Holt.

A staunch supporter of abortion rights, Ms. Holt, 56, who owns a barbecue restaurant in downtown Raleigh, makes clear where she stands on other fronts in the culture wars with signs in her storefront window: “Stop profiling Muslims,” says one. Another: “Go To The Bathroom Where You Feel Best.”

Yet Ms. Holt is also an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump. “He don’t take any stuff, just like me,” she drawled in between ringing up lunch-rush customers, using a more piquant word for stuff.

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Debbie Holt, an outspoken supporter of the Trump campaign, at Clyde Cooper’s Barbecue, the restaurant she owns in Raleigh.CreditJeremy M. Lange for The New York Times

Shannon White is as confused about her presidential preference as Ms. Holt is confident. A Mormon and Arizona transplant who usually votes for Republicans, Ms. White said she had no regard for Mrs. Clinton but doubted Mr. Trump’s adherence to any principles and was uneasy about his “abusive” language.

“I’m actually thinking more that I am going to go Libertarian,” Ms. White, 42, said after wrestling with a mannequin at the apparel store she and her husband recently opened.

For decades, this state has embodied contradictory impulses, simultaneously electing a racial hard-liner like Jesse Helms and New South Democrats like Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt. But, as its demographics shift, discerning which way the state will tilt in November seems harder than ever.

North Carolina may be the most evenly divided presidential battleground in the country.

Its two biggest population centers, Charlotte and the so-called Research Triangle of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, have been transformed by an influx of political centrists from other states. The fastest-growing party registration preference is not Republican nor Democrat, but unaffiliated. The rural white “Jessecrats,” conservative Democrats who reliably cast ballots for Mr. Helms, are dying off. Elections are now won in the fast-growing edge towns like Cary, outside Raleigh, which natives joke stands for Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.

Neither Mr. Trump, with his hard-edge nationalism, nor Mrs. Clinton, with a swirl of scandal surrounding her, is a natural fit for a state that hungers for political moderation but is increasingly disenchanted with the political class.

“They don’t like either party and they don’t like either candidate,” said Carter Wrenn, a veteran Republican strategist here. “It will just depend on which one they dislike less on Election Day.”

Polls show Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton begin the general election close to evenly matched. The surest sign of a jump ball: Democrats believe Mr. Trump starts with a narrow advantage, while Republicans believe Mrs. Clinton does. What they agree on is that, as at the national level, Republicans are largely coalescing around Mr. Trump and ruling out the possibility that Mrs. Clinton could run away with the state.

Then again, Mr. Trump needs North Carolina much more than Mrs. Clinton does.

With his difficulties among Hispanic voters pushing typical swing states such as Colorado, Nevada and Florida toward the Democrats, Mr. Trump will probably need to carry the combined 28 electoral votes from North Carolina and Virginia to capture the White House.

But Virginia, demographically and politically, is a step to North Carolina’s left, increasing the pressure on Mr. Trump to win here. While Mr. Obama twice carried Virginia, by six percentage points in 2008 and by less than four in 2012, he won North Carolina by less than one percentage point in 2008 and then, in a more closely contested election, lost North Carolina in 2012 by about two points.

Some Republicans worry that the backlash to the so-called bathroom bill, aimed at transgender people, that Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law in March could lead moderates to cast their ballots for Democrats in November. But Democrats fret that the deep unpopularity of both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, and the scorched-earth campaign to come, could depress turnout among the state’s centrists and progressives.

Finishing breakfast with her 4-year-old daughter at a Raleigh diner, Adrian Blackwell, 37, who works in medical sales and voted for Mr. Obama twice, said she would sit out the election. “I really can’t in good conscience give my vote to Hillary or Trump,” she said, citing Mrs. Clinton’s establishment ties and Mr. Trump’s policies. “I feel worried for our country.”

Brad Crone, a Democratic strategist, acknowledged that “Trump is doing better than folks think,” saying that anti-incumbency and “Hillary’s high negatives” had created a difficult environment for her.

What could tip the scales for Mr. Trump here is if he can improve his negative image, as voters’ opinions of him appear less fixed than they are of Mrs. Clinton.

“I’m not a fan of his antics,” said Rick Peele, 57, who works for an architecture firm, leans Republican and was meeting a friend for lunch in downtown Raleigh last week. “But I haven’t been impressed with Hillary, either,” he added quickly.

Asked when he had faced such a choice for president, he shot back: “Never.” JONATHAN MARTIN

A Balancing Act in the Rust Belt

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Mr. Trump’s best play for the White House is to cut a swath through the Rust Belt, flipping states traditionally won by Democrats that harbor large numbers of the white working-class voters who have welcomed his hard line on immigration and trade.

A handful of victories in the Rust Belt states stretching from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin could allow Mr. Trump to lose Florida and still become president. But all Rust Belt states are not equal: Ohio, which Mr. Obama won by just two percentage points four years ago, is the most likely Republican pickup. Michigan, which Mr. Obama won by about 10 points, is the biggest stretch.

Pennsylvania — the second-closest battleground in 2012 after Ohio — perennially tempts Republicans to pour in resources in hopes of expanding the electoral map. To win the Rust Belt, a region that has generally gone Democratic in six straight presidential elections, Mr. Trump will have to win here.

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A shuttered store in Wilkes-Barre. Working-class white Democrats in the area are flocking to Mr. Trump.CreditMark Makela for The New York Times

The challenge for him in Pennsylvania is to expand his appeal to blue-collar voters without alienating white-collar Republicans, including women repelled by his free-floating insults and businesspeople who doubt his conservatism.

“I support the Republican Party, but I’m not personally on the Trump train,” said Melissa Wilson, a preschool teacher in Chester County, outside Philadelphia. “I might not vote for president. I don’t think that he’s going to be able to speak to other nations and not cause us problems.”

“He has to pull away the marginal Obama voters, which tends to be lower socioeconomic whites,” said Henry Olsen, an electoral analyst at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “The question for Trump is whether his persona and issue stance will alienate classic Romney voters in the managerial class. The margin for error is very small.”

Two counties in eastern Pennsylvania may best illustrate the give and take: Luzerne, where working-class white Democrats are flocking to Mr. Trump, and Chester, the state’s wealthiest.

In Luzerne County, registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans, but Mr. Trump won more votes in his April primary than Mrs. Clinton did in hers. Before the vote, 4,647 Democrats and independents in Luzerne County switched their registration to Republican — nearly four times the number of Republicans and independents who reregistered as Democrats.

Mrs. Clinton’s allies say she would need to hold on only to Mr. Obama’s coalition of young people, women and minorities to carry Pennsylvania. But Republicans say Mr. Trump is making his own new math, and some Democrats acknowledge worries.

“I know families who’ve been lifelong Democrats who switched to Republican to vote for Trump,” said Mike DeCosmo, the chairman of the Luzerne County Democratic Party. “Pretty much the same thing happened when Reagan ran.”

Mr. DeCosmo mentioned a family who owns a gutter-installation business in Hazle Township, a father and four adult sons, active Democrats who left the party. “All blue-collar workers,” he said. “It’s really tough.”

In Wilkes-Barre, the county seat, two members of the plumbers and pipe fitters union, Matt Hilstolsky and Jason King, pledged on their lunch break to vote for Mr. Trump, despite expecting their union to endorse Mrs. Clinton. “Bringing back jobs is the No. 1 thing,” Mr. Hilstolsky said.

Elaine Bernardo, who works in customer service for Nabisco — the maker of Oreos that Mr. Trump often assails for moving production to Mexico — said she was a Democrat, “but a Republican at heart,” and planned to vote for Mr. Trump.

“The middle class is being eradicated,” she said, pointing to sinking economic fortunes in the area. “People who have homes that were in a certain price range can expect now 50 percent of the value they could have gotten 30 years ago. They are having their houses sold at tax sales.”

In relying on white working-class voters, Mr. Trump is bucking a demographic tide: The share of those voters in the Rust Belt is on the decline, while the share of college graduates is rising, said Ruy Teixeira, an elections analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress.

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Elaine Bernardo is a Democrat, but she plans to vote for Mr. Trump in November. “The middle class is being eradicated,” she said.CreditMark Makela for The New York Times

“Trump is trying to run up historically large margins” among the white working class, Mr. Teixeira said, “but there’s less of them to run up.”

In Chester County, by contrast, it seems as though minds are still being made up about Mr. Trump.

Val DiGiorgio, the county Republican chairman, said he hears from both “Main Line Republicans” of the Philadelphia suburbs who say they will not vote for Mr. Trump and others, including “a lot of Democrats and independents,” who are energized by his candidacy.

“The question is whether Trump makes up enough ground with those type of voters to offset what he’s going to lose,” Mr. DiGiorgio said.

He gave him a 50-50 chance.

At a fund-raiser for a state lawmaker in West Chester this month, guests in business attire expressed strong misgivings about voting for Mr. Trump. But some were already reconciling themselves to the idea.

“I’m not enthusiastic; I’m afraid he isn’t trustworthy,” said Peg Layden, a grandmother who said she voted for Mr. Cruz in the primary. “But I will definitely vote for the nominee.” TRIP GABRIEL

In Arizona, a Backlash Is Brewing

PHOENIX — Héctor Salinas, 21, was born in this city but grew up in Mexico. Nancy Herrera, 31, was born in Mexico but entered the United States illegally when she was 3 and gained legal status only when she married an American citizen 10 years ago.

They are co-workers at Mi Familia Vota, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that helps Latinos become citizens and register to vote. They are barred from discussing specific candidates, but this year they have not had to.

“The moment we talk about immigrant rights, immigration reform, people stop us and say, ‘Where do I sign? I’m going to vote this year because I don’t want Donald Trump to be my president,’” Mr. Salinas said.

Arizona is both a flash point in the nation’s immigration battles and a microcosm of a changing United States. One in three residents is Latino, and one in four Latinos is old enough to vote. And while the white population is aging — its median age is 43 — the median age of Latinos is 26.

The November election presents a unique enticement. Not only is Mr. Trump on the ballot, but so is one of his most outspoken supporters: Joe Arpaio, the swaggering Maricopa County sheriff who is seeking re-election and was found in contempt of court this month for defying a federal judge’s order to stop profiling Latinos.

“The Democrats have the best chance of winning Arizona since Bill Clinton won Arizona in 1996,” said Jaime Molera, a Republican strategist and former state schools superintendent who worked for former Senator Jon Kyl, one of the most conservative voices in Congress.

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Héctor Salinas, 21, canvassed for Mi Familia Vota, a group that helps Latinos become citizens and register to vote, last week in West Phoenix.CreditCaitlin O'Hara for The New York Times

The 2012 election offered a good window into how ethnicity and age play out here in politics. Mr. Romney carried the state by about nine points, winning two-thirds of the white vote and 71 percent of voters 65 and above. President Obama was favored by 63 percent of voters under 30 and gathered almost three-quarters of the Latino vote.

Latinos might well help turn Arizona blue. But if the left and right here agree on anything, it is that Latinos alone may not be able to do so just yet. They will need help from moderate Republicans and independents, who together form the state’s most potent voting bloc.

With Mrs. Clinton showing weakness on the Democratic side, peeling off those middle-of-the-road and right-of-center voters will not be an easy job — but it is being done by going door to door, by grass-roots groups and lower-level Democratic candidates. All are seeking to capitalize on animus toward Mr. Trump and Mr. Arpaio, particularly among younger voters, who have grown up hearing stories about the sheriff’s harsh treatment of Latinos. (Maricopa County, whose seat is Phoenix, is home to about 60 percent of Arizona’s population.)

Canvassers and candidates alike are highlighting the financial costs and reputational harm to Arizona brought on by Mr. Arpaio’s crusades against undocumented immigrants. And they are portraying Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Arpaio’s stances as indistinguishable.

“Arpaio is the original Trump,” said Stacy Pearson, the campaign manager for Paul Penzone, a former Phoenix police sergeant making his second run for sheriff as a Democrat, after nearly defeating Mr. Arpaio in 2012. “Trump’s my-way-or-the-highway approach could have been a slogan for Arpaio’s entire career.”

In an interview, Mr. Arpaio welcomed the association, saying the November elections would not be decided by party affiliation or ethnicity. “Personalities count more than ever this time around,” he said.

Republicans, he added, “have nothing to worry about.”

But Mr. Molera, the Republican strategist, said that “if Republicans say they’re not concerned, they don’t want to admit it or they just don’t get it.”

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A neighborhood in West Phoenix. “The Democrats have the best chance of winning Arizona since Bill Clinton won Arizona in 1996,” said Jaime Molera, a Republican strategist.CreditCaitlin O'Hara for The New York Times

An immigration law enacted in Arizona in 2010, which gave the police broad powers to stop people they suspected of being in the country illegally, spawned several civil rights groups that have recruited many young Latinos. Drawing on their own experiences — seeing parents deported, neighbors caught in workplace raids, siblings who dropped out of college after the state required undocumented immigrants to pay out-of-state tuition — these activists are advising immigrants of their rights and pressing those who are eligible to register to vote.

Sometimes it means pressing people who are not eligible to vote.

“I spent 30 minutes talking to a man — he was very angry, very disillusioned,” said Mr. Salinas as he prepared to knock on doors on Phoenix’s overwhelmingly Hispanic west side. “He was undocumented, but he took home three voter registration forms for his kids.”

In 2010, there were 91,000 Latinos registered to cast their ballots by mail in Arizona. This month, the number has climbed above 300,000 — and state officials say that people who vote by mail are twice as likely to cast their ballots.

“A lot of people are tired of all the stuff that keeps pushing them down,” Mr. Salinas said. “We want to turn the light on so they can believe again. If they believe again, they’ll participate. And if they participate, change comes faster.” FERNANDA SANTOS